Recipes + Ideas

The posts on this page contain a recipe or a “recipette” — an idea that, while not as detailed as a recipe, can be just as useful for spurring inspiration.

Eggplant, Meatball-Style

11 October 2011

Lately it’s felt like summer in Chicago—probably for the last time this year—and I still want summer flavors. Cue eggplant, presented here in the form of “meatballs.” I usually cede the impulse to use quotations around dishes to the likes of Thomas Keller. But this recipe felt like it needed them. Eggplant balls on their [...]

more →

Brain Food Part 2: Pitta con Verdura

7 August 2011

I’m still on deadline for my Italian cookbook project. But after spending the last week writing about Piemonte and Valle d’Aosta, regions in Italy’s northwest corner, I needed a break from the north and decided to cook up something from the south. Specifically, from Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot. Northern Italy is wonderful, but [...]

more →

Brain Food: Grilled Sardines

19 July 2011

When I was in preschool, I ate fish for breakfast. It’s not as strange as it sounds. At the time, my family lived in Davao, the main city on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The fish in question were small, no bigger than an index finger. They were fried crisp, and you could eat [...]

more →

Giving Poached Eggs Another Whirl

7 June 2011

Poaching an egg takes nerve. The first time I attempted it, I thought I was following all the rules: I had an egg and a pot of boiling water spiked with vinegar. But after sliding the egg into the water, I watched, horrified, as the whites dissolved in a web of veins, leaving the yolk [...]

more →

Asparagus for Lunch

31 May 2011

Eating asparagus is the culinary equivalent of wearing pastels: it’s a rite of spring, an indication that cold days are behind us. But while I have yet to meet a pastel I like, the same isn’t so for asparagus. I eat asparagus indiscriminately: blanched, roasted, grilled, or raw. I like it in soup, in pasta, [...]

more →

Fresh Pasta Primer: Tips on Making Dough

23 May 2011

Last week I talked about finessing a pasta recipe that had failed the first round of testing for the SPQR Cookbook. Then I received a nice comment from Patricia. She asked for tips on making better pasta dough. It’s a good question. Making pasta is as much about practice and feel for the dough as [...]

more →

Ramp Spaghetti: adventures in recipe testing

16 May 2011

Fresh pasta recipes are not easy to write. In cookbooks, they demand a lot of real estate. There needs to be explanation on how to mix the dough, how to roll the dough into silky sheets, how to cut the sheets into fettuccine or shape them into agnolotti. Even with all of that information spelled [...]

more →

Eggs and Green Garlic

10 May 2011

Eggs signal spring in a way that goes well beyond Easter and egg-dyeing. If we followed old-world cycles of life, we’d eat eggs in the spring, chicken in the fall. And although I eat eggs year-round, I acknowledge that spring farm eggs, with their carotene-loaded orange yolks, stand apart. (By comparison, winter eggs are downright [...]

more →

Chicken Soup to Conquer the World (or at least a cold)

14 March 2011

It happens to the best of us. One day, you’re proudly living up to resolutions you set early in the year—you know the ones—to exercise regularly, drink less coffee, cook more, and stay on top of work. Then you wake up with the faintest scratchy throat. It proceeds into a full-blown, real-world cold, the kind [...]

more →

I Can Do Bread all By Myself

28 February 2011

Before I fell hard for cooking—and fall I did, for everything from coulis to fish fumet (both made regular appearances on my favorite show, Great Chefs, Great Cities)—I was into baking. Particularly bread baking. Ask my sister—I made her babysit my sourdough starter once. “Feed it with flour and water twice a day,” I instructed. [...]

more →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →